Four offseason lessons from two unlikely Super Bowl teams: Savvy moves for the Seahawks, Patriots?

The Seattle Seahawks and the New England Patriots are the matchup in Super Bowl LX. It has been settling in my head for more than a day, and I still can’t fully wrap my mind around it.

Both the Seahawks and the Patriots had preseason odds of 25-1 to win their respective conferences, making them the biggest underdogs to make a Super Bowl since the 2021 Bengals — tied for the fourth-biggest odds for any teams of the past 20 years. That they are here is a surprise and an achievement.

Had the preseason favorites made the Super Bowl — Bills vs. Eagles, Chiefs vs. Lions, etc. — there wouldn’t be too much worth examining in the «how» of their ascension. We knew how that would go … had it gone that way at all. Considering we instead got the Patriots and Seahawks, it’s worth unspooling not just the 2025 regular season but also last offseason. What lessons — if any — can we take to help us identify unlikely Super Bowl contenders in future seasons?

The exercise isn’t just for us on the outside; it’s also for teams on the inside. The Patriots won four games last season. Teams with four or fewer wins this season include the Raiders, Jets, Cardinals, Titans and Giants. Do you believe any of those teams could be a Super Bowl representative in just one year? I sure don’t. But it’s evidently possible, and all of those teams (and plenty more) will be examining just how the Patriots pulled it off.

Similarly, the Seahawks made a veteran quarterback change last offseason, replacing a generally successful veteran in Geno Smith not with a star rookie first-round pick but with another veteran in Sam Darnold. Many teams in NFL history have tried and failed at such a smooth exchange on the QB carousel, so how did the Seahawks succeed?

It’s always tempting to over index on the Super Bowl teams and the lessons that can be learned from them. A few funny bounces, and we’re examining the Rams and Broncos for lessons instead. But with the appropriate caution taken, here’s the actionable team-building wisdom I think is fair to glean from the stunning playoff runs of the Seahawks and Patriots, who will face off in the Super Bowl on Feb. 8.

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Free agency spending | QB approaches
Coaching moves | Seeking big plays

Lesson No. 1: Front offices can spend their way to a Super Bowl

Every free agency will end with pontification from the media: grades, overrated/underrated classes, best deals, etc. And much of that pontification will come with the cautionary tale of the 2011 Eagles — the self-adorned «Dream Team.» Those Eagles loaded up on top-tier free agents, entered the season with a ton of hype and finished 8-8. Every offseason since then, the love thrown at the biggest spenders in free agency has come with a word of caution: Free agency isn’t as sure of a thing as it often seems.

Milton Williams, who received a top-five defensive tackle contract despite having never been a full-time starter with the Eagles. The Patriots stole Williams out from under the Panthers’ nose with that enormous offer.

This is often how teams get in trouble in free agency — getting into bidding wars for imperfect players, and all free agents are imperfect players. (Were they perfect players, they would not hit free agency at all.) But Williams hit in a big way, ending the regular season third in pressure rate for all defensive tackles (second is teammate Christian Barmore, who is having a career-best season playing beside Williams).

The Patriots gave $63.5 million to wide receiver Stefon Diggs — another hit, as Diggs has been arguably the most reliable stick-moving receiver in the NFL. They gave $54 million to cornerback Carlton Davis III, and he has been a key upgrade at No. 2 cornerback, allowing the Patriots to play more man coverage and unlock the value of star young corner Christian Gonzalez. And they gave $43.5 million to edge rusher Harold Landry III, which has been more fine than great. But no matter, because they signed fellow edge rusher K’Lavon Chaisson for only $3 million, and that has been an enormous win.

Consider the archetypes here. Williams, the strong rotational player who was paid to fill a bigger role. Chaisson, the former first-round pick who didn’t work out for the team that drafted him and then saw the lightbulb go on in recent years. Diggs, the post-prime veteran who couldn’t do everything he used to do but was still elite as an underneath route runner. And Landry and Davis, the familiar faces with previous connections to the coaching staff, allowing them to hit the ground running from day one, raising the floor and establishing the culture.

We didn’t even get to half of the names. Starting linebacker Robert Spillane (883 snaps) was another solid free agent deal for New England, and backup Jack Gibbens (573) was given a smaller one-year contract. Starting safety Jaylinn Hawkins (1,031 snaps), receiver Mack Hollins (698 snaps), center Garrett Bradbury (1,214 snaps) and run-stuffing nose Khyiris Tonga (386 snaps) all signed for less than $5 million per year and have returned a ton of value on their contracts. Rock-steady right tackle Morgan Moses (1,176 snaps) has hummed along next to Mike Onwenu as the strength of the Patriots’ running game.

So, $364 million, and not a cent misplaced or misused. It is extremely rare to see that much spending turn into such immediate success. Look just below the Patriots on last offseason’s spending rankings, and you’ll see the Vikings and Giants. Minnesota paid big money to sign guard Will Fries, corner Byron Murphy Jr. and defensive tackle Jonathan Allen, and it got only solid play for its investment. New York peppered its roster with short-term deals, but its bigger contracts — Paulson Adebo, Darius Slayton, Jevon Holland — were either average signings or big misses.

Fourth on last year’s spending rankings? The Seahawks.

Seattle’s numbers are getting juiced a little bit. They spent just over $200 million in 2025 free agency, but $100 million of that was in one contract: Sam Darnold. The only other significant deals they signed were to get receiver Cooper Kupp ($45 million) and defensive end DeMarcus Lawrence ($32.5 million). Both contracts are good examples of how smart teams spend in free agency — filling critical roles for the systems the coaches want to run.

While Kupp’s best days as a high-volume pass catcher are behind him, he remains one of the most impactful blocking receivers in football. Paying $15 million per year to a blocking receiver sure is a pretty penny, but so many Jaxon Smith-Njigba screens or Kenneth Walker III runs spring on the back of Kupp blocks. He has the same impact on this offense that he had on the Rams’ for so many years. He’s too strong for defensive backs to contest and too quick for linebackers to cover. He remains a matchup problem.

Lawrence, meanwhile, has stuffed the stat sheet more obviously. In 2025, he had six sacks, 20 QB hits, 11 TFLs, three forced fumbles, three fumble recoveries and two touchdowns. The advanced data loves him, especially as a run defender. Among edge rushers, only Maxx Crosby generated more EPA on run stuffs than Lawrence — and he did it on twice as many snaps.

Without a heavy-handed defensive end who can play two gaps and slow runs down behind the line of scrimmage, Mike Macdonald’s defensive structure … just doesn’t work. It cannot exist. The math doesn’t math. The Seahawks sprinted to sign Lawrence in free agency despite his age and questionable pass rush value because he had the exact skillset that would unlock the system for the other 10 players on the field.

If the Patriots took a shotgun approach to free agency by throwing money at every position to raise the floor across the board, the Seahawks took a more precise approach to raise the ceiling. This was harder to see and appreciate at the time. I should know. In our post-free agency big questions file last March, I gave the Patriots the nod for the team most improved … but said the Seahawks took the biggest step back. They signed two aging veterans off injury-riddled 2024 seasons, and I thought they downgraded at quarterback when they went from Geno Smith to Darnold. That, as it turns out, was extremely incorrect.

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There probably isn’t a sweeping lesson here for NFL teams to learn. Despite the fact that both spent a lot of money, these two teams spent it very differently. Seattle drilled three key spots with scheme fits; New England overwhelmed a bad roster with floor-raising talent, then hit the accelerator button when its second-year quarterback took a massive leap. Even though they took different paths, both front offices proved that one critical offseason can dramatically swing a team’s future. While patient team-building is always the best team-building, all 32 franchises truly are just one offseason away in the hyper-competitive NFL … if they play things the right way.

That said, there is perhaps a more substantive lesson to be learned from the Seahawks’ free agent period, specifically.

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Lesson No. 2: The middle class of QB contracts is a viable way to success

This is a tricky thing to sort out. Let’s start with what we know.

Quarterback contracts have ballooned enormously over the past 10 years. We can look at pure dollar figures to see this. The five biggest quarterback cap hits this season average out to $46.2 million. Six years ago, in 2019, that number was $28.3 million. We’ve seen an increase of almost $20 million in that short period of time — and remember, that’s through the COVID-19-affected cap adjustment of 2021.

But it isn’t just that the top contracts are growing at an increasing rate — it’s that the true top tier of quarterbacking contracts are yanking the next couple of tiers along with it. The Athletic ran a study looking at how many quarterbacks per season were making at least 17% of that year’s salary cap (by average annual value). Eleven quarterbacks fit the bill in 2025, and in the past four seasons, at least nine QB contracts have cleared 17% of that year’s cap ceiling. But before that, there were never more than five in any one season.

More teams than ever are devoting a large chunk of their cap space to their quarterback. From this we can make many conclusions. Some are fairly self-evident. A huge wave of quarterback talent entered the league in the late 2010s that was always going to spike QB value when they hit the end of their rookie deals: Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, Joe Burrow and Justin Herbert. The league is also increasingly skewing pass happy, and as running backs become more fungible, money flows into the passing attack. This is intuitive.

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Other claims are tougher to back. Quarterbacks are getting paid earlier, on lighter bodies of work. Teams such as the Dolphins and Cardinals paid their QBs expecting inconsistent rookie success to blossom into yearly production, and they are now staring down the barrel of big dead cap hits. It’s worth wondering whether the risk is worth the reward on these massive deals — but by the same token, the Packers and Jaguars look wise for having inked their massive extensions with Jordan Love and Trevor Lawrence. But even then, there’s still risk. What if Lawrence and Love end up always somewhere between QB8 and QB12, never ascending to that truly elite echelon at which the $55 million contract becomes a value?

You can see why this is hard to parse.

The rise of Darnold gives us some clarity. Outgoing Seahawks quarterback Geno Smith was seeking a contract somewhere in the range of $40 million, and Seattle thought that was too much — both for the total contract and the structure. In the Darnold deal, they didn’t just get a lower yearly salary ($33.5 million per year), but they also landed a deal that could easily be cut after just one season. Seahawks general manager John Schneider went for youth and flexibility when he traded Smith and signed Darnold — always a wise move for a team in transition.

But critically, he was able to do it without sacrificing the ceiling of a Super Bowl-caliber quarterback. You had to squint to see it — Darnold was coming off his first good season as a starter in a near-perfect environment, and even then he floundered against top defenses. But he could do enough … much like Jimmy Garoppolo could do enough for the 49ers in 2019, or Jared Goff for the Rams in 2018, or Nick Foles for the Eagles in 2017.

The bar of «do enough» is extremely difficult to identify. In some cases, it is physical talent. Darnold still has that golden arm that got him drafted with the third pick in 2018. In other cases, it is scheme fit; such was the case with Garoppolo. Sometimes, it’s intangible — think Foles on that magical run. But Darnold was productive enough with the Vikings that you could talk yourself into him having enough. He showed a ceiling that other fringe starting options from last offseason, such as Daniel Jones or Justin Fields, never really did.

Quarterback contract value and Super Bowl appearances have been long debated and interrogated since the 2011 collective-bargaining agreement. Look over historical Super Bowls, and you don’t see many winners with rookie contract QBs, as the Patriots have in Drake Maye. Those rookie contract quarterbacks are obviously younger and less experienced, and the Super Bowl (breaking news here) is a pretty big game — those young guys can struggle under the bright lights. Similarly, quarterbacks with league-leading cap hits don’t often win the game, either, because their contracts preclude their teams from fielding as deep of a roster.

Quarterback contracting becomes a tricky needle to thread. The ideal Super Bowl quarterback is a veteran on a cheap contract who has big-game experience and enough talent to power a championship offense. You know, a totally fictitious ideal.

But in Darnold, this is exactly what the Seahawks went for last offseason. Darnold was the earliest-drafted and most physically talented QB available in free agency. He had success in one scheme, and Seattle hired a coach in Klint Kubiak who both ran that offense and had worked with Darnold in the past. And because Darnold came with so much uncertainty, the Seahawks got him for a cheap, team-friendly deal.

In doing so, they took on a huge risk. It’s easy to forget now, but in the middle of this season, it looked like they had wasted an otherwise perfect team on a quarterback who was constitutionally incapable of beating the Rams. But the lesson in Darnold is that the margin between disastrous and successful is much thinner than we might believe. This is also the lesson in Tua Tagovailoa and Kyler Murray on their now debilitating deals. It’s the lesson of the Eagles’ offense under Jalen Hurts, towering last season and whimpering this season. It’s the lesson of the Jaguars offense under Lawrence, embarrassing last season and surgical this season. This middle tier of quarterbacks balances on a razor’s edge. The light is not nearly as far from the dark as we think.

Jones in Indianapolis is a perfect example. It’s extremely unlikely he recovers his early-2025 form fresh off an Achilles injury, but if he does, the Colts don’t just have a good offense — they might return to that record-setting form. Malik Willis, the reclamation quarterback project du jour, will see a competition for his services, and his eventual contract ($30 million?) will look silly relative to his career production … but that will all be forgotten if he plays for his new team like he has for the Packers.

And as such, the Seahawks don’t really teach us anything about QB contract value. It’s not that Darnold’s $33.5 million was a magic number to identify efficient contracts. And it’s worth noting that big free agent quarterback contracts are generally rare. Signal-callers almost always sign extensions after they are acquired via trade, in which they are negotiating not against other teams but against the draft capital used on them. It’s not every year that a Darnold-like target is even available.

Instead of looking at how many quarterbacks now make big money as a reflection on the position, we should look at it as a reflection on how good offenses have become at drawing production from their signal-callers. The middle class of quarterback contracts swells not because passers are more valuable, but because playcallers and receivers and offensive lines have gotten so much better at stuffing their quarterback’s stat sheet, and good agents get their guys paid accordingly.

You can get a highly productive passing game out of Darnold in 2025. It would blow the mind of a Jets fan in 2020, or a Panthers fan in 2022, or an NFL fan in 2023 as Darnold sat on the bench in San Francisco. But it was within his range of outcomes, and the Seahawks did everything right to make that perfect runout as likely as possible. As we continue to see non-elite quarterbacks make more and more Super Bowl runs, our understanding of team building will continue to widen, and perhaps our QB-centric understanding of offense will change to incorporate a more holistic view.

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Lesson No. 3: It’s OK to hire defensive (or CEO) head coaches

Time and time again at this time of year, we hear the same concern from fan bases of teams hiring a new coach: We have to hire an offensive guy! Otherwise, any good offensive coordinator we hire will just get scooped up as a head coach next year.

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Sure, maybe … but what a great problem to have. Ask any Seahawks fan right now how sad they are that offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak is almost certainly going to be a head coach somewhere else in a month. They’re going to the Super Bowl. It’s tomorrow’s problem.

Now, some necessary caveats. More offensive head coaches have made it to the Super Bowl in recent seasons than defensive head coaches; there are simply more offensive head coaches than there are defensive ones. And of course it is a big deal that the Seahawks are (likely) losing Kubiak this offseason and will have to fill his shoes. It could theoretically be the one Jenga block that collapses their tower in 2026.

But the idea that offensive coaches are so precious that they must be hired and protected at all costs is codswallop. You know who is precious? Mike Macdonald. Hired into a division with the league’s preeminent offensive minds in Sean McVay and Kyle Shanahan, Macdonald went 4-2 this season, including playoffs, on the back of some impressive defense performances. The 2025 Seahawks are the most effective run defense from two-high shells that we’ve seen in the past five seasons.

Unlike the offensive scheme lords, who spawn mimics and proliferate ideas that take over the league, Macdonald is irreplaceable. Other people are trying to run iterations of his defense — including Zach Orr, Anthony Weaver, Dennard Wilson and Jesse Minter — to varying but unequal degrees of success. Much of the 2026 hiring cycle has been defined by these characters: Minter is the new head coach in Baltimore as they seek the same defensive excellence they once had under Macdonald; Jeff Hafley, not of the coaching tree, runs quite similar stuff and just got the job in Miami. But defensive scheming cannot be copy and pasted nearly as neatly as offensive scheming. It requires more adjustment to each specific opponent and a better marriage between personnel and playcalling. What’s between Macdonald’s ears is rare stuff — the stuff that powers dynasties. No exaggeration.

On the other side of the field two Sundays from now will be Mike Vrabel. He is not a defensive schemer, and he does not call plays. Now that guys such as John Harbaugh and Mike Tomlin were out of jobs this offseason, Vrabel might be the platonic ideal of the CEO head coach. He doesn’t bring a prepackaged system with him but instead is the tip of the spear of weekly planning, in-game decision-making and situational management.

Think about how much should have gone wrong in New England’s season. Defensive coordinator Terrell Williams, diagnosed with prostate cancer in late September, barely called plays this regular season. Rookie left tackle Will Campbell has struggled on the blindside. Injuries piled up on defense, with missed time from Milton Williams, Robert Spillane, Khyiris Tonga and Harold Landry III. A less-steady hand on the mast lets these little problems snowball into an understandable playoff loss for a young and inexperienced team — but not Vrabel.

Remember all the players from the old guard whom Vrabel cast aside, as well: Kyle Dugger, Cole Strange, Jabrill Peppers, Davon Godchaux, Deatrich Wise Jr. That’s not even considering the recent draftees — acquired with decent draft capital — on whom he cut bait: Ja’Lynn Polk, Javon Baker, Layden Robinson. The turnover on this roster has been substantial.

Many CEO coaches aspire to this level of successful roster reimagining. They jettison the old, install the new … and immediately faceplant. Vrabel backed up his dramatic moves with immediate results, though. All of those new free agent acquisitions and promoted draft picks contributed immediately. That’s the sign of a coach who understands players — what motivates them, and how to best set them up for success.

It’s fair to argue that Vrabel’s and Macdonald’s situations are unique. Vrabel had an enormous amount of organizational trust from his time in New England as a player, and he had already turned around a listless roster in Tennessee. Macdonald, meanwhile, might be a one-of-one defensive mind, and chasing his tail will lead to tons of embarrassing hires.

But there are evidently other roads available to NFL franchises than snagging the latest assistants off the ever-expanding Shanahan/McVay tree. Those avenues work as well. The wonderful thing about the league is that there is more than one way to skin the cat. Focusing on a certain archetype of head coach misses the truth that it takes a special person to fill that role, no matter their style or background.

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Lesson No. 4: Teams should be chasing explosive plays

This is not a lesson exclusive to the Seahawks or the Patriots, but it bears (re)emphasis. Having a player on the roster who can tip the game in one lightning strike of a touch is like having a Bullet Bill in Mario Kart — you get back in the game, fast.

The Patriots’ home-run hitters are receiver Kayshon Boutte and running back TreVeyon Henderson. They use neither in high doses. Boutte had 10 receptions of 20-plus yards across the regular season, which is tied for 28th among all wideouts. But on a per-touch basis, over 30% of Boutte’s touches went for at least 20 yards. He was behind only Alec Pierce, Jameson Williams and Christian Watson there. Boutte had a 32-yard touchdown in a tight window against All-Pro cornerback Derek Stingley Jr. in the divisional round against the Texans, and a 42-yard catch-and-run against the Chargers in the wild-card round.

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Boutte is a third-year player who has emerged wonderfully in the X receiver role for a Patriots team that desperately needed emergence at wide receiver. But Henderson was a more intentional acquisition from this current staff, and while he has never wrested the starting role from Rhamondre Stevenson as many imagined he might when he was drafted top 40 last April, he has hit big plays when called upon.

Henderson doesn’t just hit doubles or triples; he hits true home runs. Among backs with at least 100 touches, only Jahmyr Gibbs churned out 40-plus-yard plays at a higher rate. Henderson has four 50-plus-yard touchdowns on the season, and they’ve come in waves — two against the Bills in Week 15, two against the Buccaneers in Week 10.

But Henderson has seen his role diminish — only three touches against the Broncos in the AFC title game — as the Patriots have leaned on Stevenson. Anecdotally, Stevenson is the better back for vision, decision-making and finishing through contact. He picks up the grimy yardage that keeps the offense on schedule. But here’s the kicker: Stevenson was tied for seventh among all running backs this regular season with 12 touches of 20-plus yards. A towering 7.4% of Stevenson’s touches went for at least 20, the highest rate of all running backs.

Of those 12 touches, five were receptions — Stevenson is a much more dangerous receiver than he’s given credit for, especially when working downfield — and seven came in the last three weeks of the regular season. He has bowled that explosiveness over into the postseason, with a 48-yard catch-and-run against the Chargers and a 20-yard tote against the Texans.

So no running back rips off 20-plus-yard chunks at a more efficient rate than Stevenson. You know who’s second? The Seahawks’ Walker at 6.0%.

Walker’s explosiveness is no secret, but his obsession with the big play often led to haywire vision and poor decision-making. Thus, he was outsnapped by teammate Zach Charbonnet in each of the Seahawks’ final four games of the regular season. But Charbonnet tore an ACL against the 49ers in the divisional round, and now the Seahawks are forced to ride the lightning with Walker. He has responded with consecutive games of 100-plus scrimmage yards.

The Seahawks’ greatest achievement in explosiveness is not in Walker; he has always been this way. Rather, it is in receiver Smith-Njigba. It cannot be overstated how dramatically the new offensive coaching staff has reimagined the usage of JSN in Seattle. This season, Smith-Njigba has averaged 11.2 air yards per target. That’s an enormous leap from the 8.3 he enjoyed last season, which was already a leap from the 6.0 of his rookie year, when he was one the most targeted players on screens in the entire league. Smith-Njigba has also seen a leap in his overall target rate; he has been targeted on 35% of his routes this season, as opposed to 23% the previous season.

As such, Smith-Njigba has had a historic season for big gains. Because he has both an astronomically high target rate and a substantial chunk of air yardage, 5.4% of Smith-Njigba’s routes — not his targets or his catches, just his routes — go for 20-plus yards. This is the best number for any receiver over the past two seasons.

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Accompanying Smith-Njigba only recently on the Seahawks’ roster is midseason trade acquisition Rashid Shaheed. Shaheed is the Seahawks’ version of Henderson — not a player who gets a high touch volume, but when he hits for big plays, they are huge. Shaheed opened the NFC Championship Game with a 51-yard catch against the Rams and had a 30-yard run on an end-around in the divisional round against the 49ers. Of course, he opened that game with a 95-yard kickoff return touchdown, his third return TD of the season for Seattle.

This brings our talk of explosive plays full circle, back to the Patriots. Six players had multiple return touchdowns in the regular season. Shaheed was one of them. Patriots cornerback Marcus Jones was another.

The truth of the explosiveness in both Seattle and New England doesn’t belong to any one player, but really to the priorities of the coaching staffs. Shaheed has three return touchdowns on the season, but Tory Horton — the Seahawks punt returner who preceded him — also had one. Similarly, New England running back Antonio Gibson housed a kickoff earlier this season (Jones returns only punts). From a per-return basis, the Seahawks and Patriots led the league in creating special teams scores. Similarly, from a per-play basis, the Patriots’ offense led the league in 20-yard play rate, while the Seahawks were fourth.

Both teams chased big plays to get here, and it’s reflected not just in the personnel they acquired (Shaheed and Henderson) but also the personnel for whom they reimagined roles (Stevenson and Smith-Njigba). It’s reflected not just in their offense but also in their special teams. An obsession with explosive plays bleeds through the entire organization.

This should be a north star for player acquisition and staff hiring in the offseason. It’s a great year for explosive wide receivers in free agency — Pierce, Shaheed and George Pickens are all about to hit the open market, as is tight end Kyle Pitts Sr., who led all players at his position with 12 receptions of 20-plus yards. If your head coaching candidate isn’t preaching the value of explosive plays and presenting on how he’s going to create them on one side of the ball, limit them on the other and manufacture them in the often overlooked third phase of the game, drop him. When spending money and draft capital to acquire players, look beyond the filled roles on the team and consider bolstering already strong positions with truly elite speed. One huge play can tip a game.